16 It is obvious that epistemic justification can be
transferred
from one belief or set of beliefs to another via inferential connections,
but where does such justification originally come from?

17 Foundationalism:

(a) "some empirical beliefs possess a measure of epistemic justification
which is somehow immediate or intrinsic to them, at least
in the sense of not being dependent inferentially or otherwise, on the
epistemic justification of other empirical beliefs; and

This gives us what many theorists speak of as the "thesis of epistemic
priority"--the view that some claims have a privileged epistemological
status which allows them to play a unique role in epistemological
justifications. Foundationalists' clearly subscribe to this thesis!

(b) it is these "basic beliefs" which are the ultimate source of justification
for all of empirical knowledge.

2.1 The Epistemic Regress Problem:

18 A concise statement of the rationale for foundationalism
(from Anthony Quinton). Long citation which sets the issue up well.
BonJour goes on to point out that:

-the most obvious way to show that an empirical belief is
justified is to produce a justificatory argument, but

-the premises of such an argument would themselves need to be justified,
and, thus

-19 it appears that an infinite regress may be avoided only if one
adopts some version of foundationalism.

19-20 BonJour indicates that he construes the notion of inferential
justification broadly. He is not concerned with the origin
of the belief, he only asks that the inference be "available to the individual,"
and he allows that the individual may not be able to explicitly formulate
the inferences.

21 He summarizes what he takes to be the four "options" available
in regard to the regress problem: "prima facie, there are four
main logical possibilities as to the eventual outcome of the potential
regress of epistemic justification, assuming one's epistemic interlocutor--who
may of course be oneself--continues to demand justification for each new
premise-belief being offered:

(1) the regress might terminate with [arbitrary] beliefs which
are offered as justifying premises for earlier beliefs but for which no
justification of any kind, however implicit, is available when they are
challenged in turn.

(2) The regress might continue indefinitely "backwards," with ever more
new empirical premise-beliefs being introduced, so that no belief is repeated
in the sequence and yet no end is ever reached.

(3) The regress might circle back upon itself, so that if the demand
for justification is pushed far enough, beliefs which have already appeared
as premises (and have themselves been provisionally justified) earlier
in the sequence of justificatory arguments are again appealed to as justifying
premises.

(4) The regress might terminate because "basic" empirical beliefs are
reached, beliefs which have a degree of epistemic justification which is
not inferentially dependent on other empirical beliefs and thus raises
no further issue of empirical justification."
Note: he leaves skepticism off the list as one
of the possible alternatives.

22 The foundationalist rejects the first three alternatives claiming
that they lead to skepticism (of course, this means skepticism should be
considered as the "fifth option above):

-The first view, (1), relies upon an appeal to beliefs which
are, from an epistemic standpoint, entirely arbitrary. While
some have held that the issue of justification makes no sense when one
is dealing with such beliefs,1
BonJour maintains that this is not an adequate response:

--23 "...does the fact that a belief has the characteristic
# [where # is whatever "criterion" one appeals to] constitute a cogent
reason for thinking that it is likely to be true? If the answer to
this question is no, then the choice of the class of special beliefs seems
still to be epistemically arbitrary and to do violence to the basic
concept of epistemic justification, as outlined above."

-23-24 The second view, (2), is typically rejected because,
it is alleged, the infinite regress is vicious. BonJour points
out that one needs to argue that this is the case. He then
presents such an argument:

--actual human knowers would have to possess, literally, an
infinite number of empirical beliefs on such a view, and this is impossible.

-24 The third view, (3), requires the adoption of a "holistic
and nonlinear" conception of justification which emphasizes internal coherence.
This
orientation is subject to three major objections:

--25 (i) "...no matter how high the standard of coherence is
set, it seems clear that there will be very many, probably infinitely
many, systems of belief which will satisfy it and between which such
a coherence theory will be unable to choose in an epistemically nonarbitrary
way."

--(ii) "...such a view seems to deprive empirical knowledge of any input
from or contact with the nonconceptual world."

--(iii) "...such a coherence theory will seemingly be unable to establish
an appropriate connection between justification and truth unless it
reinterprets truth as long-run coherence...."

---Philosophical Aside: these three objections are the
major classic objections against coherence theories, and BonJour will have
to respond to them as he develops his own coherence theory in Part Two.
This passage, then, should be revisited after reading the later part of
the book!

"Like any argument by elimination, however, this one
cannot be conclusive until the surviving alternative has itself been carefully
examined. Foundationalist theories may turn out to have their problems
as well, perhaps even severe enough to warrant another look at coherence
theories."2

2.2 The Varieties of Foundationalism:

26 Three different versions of foundationalism will be distinguished
by noting the differences in the degree of noninferential justification
claimed for the "basic beliefs."

Moderate foundationalism--"...the noninferential warrant possessed
by basic beliefs is sufficient by itself to satisfy the adequate-justification
condition for knowledge."

26-27 Strong foundationalism--the basic beliefs are held to be
logically infallible and so, clearly, if they are believed, they provide
the best possible epistemic justification for accepting them. Some
thinkers in the foundationalist tradition speak of certainty, indubitability,
and incorrigibility, but it is logical infallibility that they
are after.3

-"...there are a number of persuasive arguments which seem
to show that, whether or not foundationalism in general is acceptable,
strong foundationalism is untenable:"

--For example, Armstrong's argument: "consider the state of
affairs of a person A having a certain allegedly infallible basic empirical
belief B, call this state of affairs S1. B will have as its content
the proposition that some empirical state of affairs S2 exists. Now
it seems to follow from the logic of the concept of belief that S1 and
S2 must be distinct states of affairs. Beliefs may of course be about
other beliefs, but beliefs cannot somehow be directly about themselves....And
thus it would seem to be logically quite possible for S1 to occur in the
absence of S2, in which case, of course belief B would be false.
A proponent of logical infallibility must claim that this is, in the cases
he is interested in, not logically possible, but it is hard to see what
the basis for such a claim might be, so long as S1 and S2 are conceded
to be separate states of affairs."

28 Foundationalism does not need to be strong.
The basic beliefs need, merely, to be adequately justified--that is, moderate
foundationalism is foundationalism enough. There is, however, a third
type of foundationalism:
weak foundationalism. Here "...basic
beliefs possess only
a very low degree of epistemic justification
on their own, a degree of justification insufficient by itself either to
satisfy the adequate-justification condition for knowledge or to qualify
them as acceptable justifying premises for further beliefs. Such
beliefs are only "initially credible," rather than fully justified."

-28-29 This view must respond to the regress problem differently
from the moderate and strong versions of foundationalism: "...the weak
foundationalist's basic beliefs are not adequately justified on their own
to serve as justifying premises for everything else. The weak foundationalist
solution to this problem is to attempt to augment the justification of
both basic and nonbasic beliefs by appealing to the concept of coherence.
Very roughly, if a suitably large, suitably coherent system can be built,
containing a reasonably high proportion of one's initially credible
basic beliefs together with nonbasic beliefs, then it is claimed, the
justification of all the beliefs in the system...may be increased to the
point of being adequate for knowledge...."

--29 this view is subject to the central objection to all versions
of foundationalism, however: "...namely that there is no way for
an empirical belief to have any degree of warrant which does not
depend on the justification of other empirical beliefs...."

--this version does not make the underlying logic of "augmentation"
or "magnification" of justification clear.

--this version may be subject to some of the problems which plague
coherentism.

2.3 A Basic Problem for Foundationalism:

30 On what basis is such a [basic] belief supposed to be justified,
once any appeal to further empirical premises is ruled out?

30-31 ...if basic beliefs are to provide a secure foundation for empirical
knowledge, if inference from them is to be the sole basis upon which other
empirical beliefs are justified, then that feature, whatever it may be,
by virtue of which a particular belief qualifies as basic must also constitute
a good reason for thinking that the belief is true.

-31 Thus, "...in an acceptable foundationalist account a particular
empirical belief B could qualify as basic only if the premises of the following
[meta-?] justificatory argument were adequately justified:

(1) B has feature #.
(2) Beliefs having feature # are highly likely to be true.
Therefore, B is highly likely to be
true."

---Both these premises can't be justified on an a priori
basis
and this spells trouble for foundationalism. "But if all this is
correct, we can get the disturbing result that B is not basic after all,
since its [meta-?] justification depends on that of at least one other
empirical belief."

32 His core anti-foundationalist argument is spelled
out explicitly in a long argument on p. 32 and the possible foundationalist
responses are spelled out on pp. 32-33.

Notes:(click on the
note number to return to the text the note refers to)

1 This is one of the contentions involved in some of
the sorts of views attributed above (on pp. 13-14) to Rorty and Williams.

2 BonJour, of course, intends to return to the coherence
theories after he has shown that the foundationalists suffer from
insuperable difficulties. Note that if there are other alternatives
(other "disjuncts"), however, the argument he offers is incomplete (at
best). Note, first, that skepticism clearly constitutes one available
position in the dialectic regarding the regress of justifications.
In addition, there are a number of theorists who attempt to offer orientations
which constitute "alternatives" to the foundationalist/coherentist
dichotomy. Amongst the most promising of these efforts is Susan Haack's
orientation--cf., "A Foundherentist Theory of Empirical Justification,"
in The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings,
ed. Louis Pojman, op. cit., pp. 283-293; and Evidence and Inquiry
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).

3 On the differences between these distinct concepts,
cf.
William Alston's "Varieties of Privileged Access," in The
American Philosophical Quarterly v. 8 (1971), pp. 223-241.